A Space to Create: Five Innovative Office Spaces, Changing the Way We Create

As technologies and businesses evolve, so too has our definition of the word ‘office’. We are a global community; waking up at 6am London time to video-conference with Melbourne at sunset. With digital platforms bringing us closer together, global creative hubs are seeing a rise in flexible working hours and co-working spaces, and a shift towards dedicated creative spaces, moulded to induce focus and energy, to allow for rest and recovery, to balance work and play, and to defy the traditional 9-5 work mentality. 

TBWA, New York 

Sit where you like! 

Italian designer, Gaetano Pesce has designed a Rubik’s cube of modular work-blocks, each completed with glass walls to create an open space inspired by the outdoors. In a throwback to their schooldays, employees at ad agency, TBWA, are encouraged to change desks every day to diversify workflow, increase office rapport and promote impromptu collaborations and discussions. 

Mother, London 

A seat at the table.

Designed by Wilkinson Architects, this London agency make a bold, industrial statement with a conference room designed around a 250ft communal concrete table. The solid concrete slab seats up to 200 employees, and certainly deters any surreptitious napping during meetings. 

Freund von Freunden, Berlin 

The Apartment 

Sister to their community headquarters in Kreuzberg, is the Freund von Freunden Apartment in Mitte, filled with plush seating areas, a fully functional kitchen space, and decked with colourful books and vintage finds. It is literally a home for creative minds to converge. A versatile quarters for meetings, workshops, collaborations and events, FvF desbribe their North Berlin hub as ‘a multi-faceted space for friends and partners to gather and express their creativity.’ 

Kickstarter, New York 

Back to the heart of things 

It’s important for any creative business to be able to look beyond the hype, to distil their creative process and rediscover the heart of their business purpose. This is exactly what Kickstarter have done at their functional, industrial head-quarters in Brooklyn. Free of the bell and whistles found in many modern creative hubs, the space perfectly tunes into the hard work and grind required to bring to life the thousands of entrepreneurial projects they’ve helped to put in motion. As a reminder, the walls are lined with thousands of case studies of successful projects funded on site. 

Google, Zurich 

And you thought the office fußball table was cool! 

Google offices are renowned for their inventive approach to the working environment, with designated napping areas, recreation hubs and movie rooms. This Zurich office features basketball court, an aquarium and a massage lounge. You can even get from A to B using the fireman’s pole!